


i can't help but drive away

by tozier



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Canon - Book, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Suicidal Thoughts, dangerous things done in cars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-04 08:54:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20468369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tozier/pseuds/tozier
Summary: Eddie continues to stare at the side of his face and Richie wants to say so much, has to bite his lip so he doesn’t scream all the things he feels for Eddie. He wants to throttle him, wants to choke his pretty neck and yell in his face that he’s loved him for so long, he doesn’t know who he’d be without the feeling. Wants to tell him that he'd die for him, that he wishes he already had.Richie feels like a wild animal—caged, captive, too dangerous to be free. He suddenly feels all the things wrong with him bubbling to the surface, all the red-hot, ugly things that make him human: lust, desire, anger, obsession. Heart racing and hands clammy, he presses down harder on the gas and veers down the road that will take them away further into the woods.or, Richie and Eddie go for a drive and learn too much.





	i can't help but drive away

**Author's Note:**

> this is a scene pulled from a WIP that will probably forever stay a WIP. but i was looking through it after all the emotions that have been coming up from the movie (five days!) that's about to drop, and figured i'd share with the class. we're gonna feast, kids. eat up.
> 
> song in the tin is "drive" by oh wonder, which inspired this fic.

It’s the summer of ‘66 and Richie is puttering around the house, cleaning for the party his parents are throwing the following day that Richie was told to make himself scarce for the duration of. He's simultaneously trying to cook himself a meal of pasta and sauce without burning down the building. His parents are out buying supplies (read: liquor) for the party, and, as he always thinks at least once when he cooks, he wishes Eddie were there to help. He wishes Eddie were there at all, even if he would be certainly entirely unhelpful. He’d probably just sit on the counter, kick his heels into the cabinets to the beat of whatever record Richie is playing and laugh at him for being such a terrible cook. Richie wants him there anyway.

He paces the kitchen, putting things away, because he’s an adult now—a real, bonafide adult—and adults put things away. He tosses some old takeout left by his mother from the fridge into the trash before straightening up the counter and throwing away the pile of old receipts. Eddie would have his head if he knew Richie isn’t keeping his receipts, but the pile is mostly for Eddie’s sake anyway, to make him feel like Richie is being more responsible than he actually is. He finishes plating his pasta—mushy, always under or overcooked, but Richie is used to that—it’s not like he can do anything right, anyway. He grabs a fork from the drawer and sits down at the kitchen table. He tries a bite of his mess of a dish before grimacing and letting the fork clatter to the table in frustration. 

He wants to be more mature than he is, wants to act his age, or at least function his age, but he doesn’t. He can’t imagine functioning the way a standard 18-year-old boy would. He looks at Eddie, going to college, planning his future, while Richie works at the fucking grocery store in town and has no college plans to speak of. He wants to move to California at the end of the summer, but he knows he’d pack his bags, load them in Eddie’s car and follow him to New York if Eddie would only ask. He looks at the fork and it shines in the bright, fluorescent light of the overhead lamp in his kitchen. It looks powerful. It looks dangerous.

Richie grabs a napkin, wipes off the fork, and begins examining it. It’s a newer fork, its tines sharper than most of the other ones in his drawer, all dull from overuse. He remembers getting this set of cutlery; Eddie dragged him out of his house last May, deciding Richie’s family’s cutlery drawer needed some ‘spring cleaning’. He had no organizational system in this drawer, everything strewn about haphazardly, and Eddie thought this was a travesty, deciding for the both of them that Richie had cut himself on too many knives while reaching for spoons and was going to buy him a holder for all his family’s forks, knives and spoons.

They went to the store and Eddie shopped around seriously, debating between systems, asking for Richie’s advice. Richie had whined and said the drawer was fine and he wasn’t going to entertain Eddie’s insane request. Eddie laughed loudly, bodily, boldly, and Richie remembers him looking so beautiful then, eyes closed, head thrown back, hand covering his mouth, trying to contain the gasping choke that was his laugh. Richie took Eddie’s hand away from his face and held it in his own briefly, clasping their palms together and holding on tight. Eddie’s eyes opened and he stared up at Richie delightedly, eyes glittering, smile splitting his face wide open. Eddie held back just as firmly until Richie slipped his hand from his before they began to look suspicious to onlookers. 

Stupid fucking town. Stupid fucking clown. 

_ DON’T TOUCH THE OTHER BOYS RICHIE _

Trying to pretend he wasn't who he knew he was, Richie pointed at a holder, saying, “That one’s fine.” Eddie looked at Richie like he moulded his world in his hands. Richie tore his eyes away, too worried he’d show his cards, but still had to hide his smile in his shoulder. Eddie grabbed the holder and a random set of cutlery from the shelf, put it in the tote and put his hand on Richie’s lower back, leading him down the aisle. He knew Eddie saw his smile from the way he kept his hand there, long after he could’ve taken it away. Richie could feel Eddie’s warm skin through his thin t-shirt. He wore that feeling like a burn for weeks afterwards.

_ DON’T OR THEY’LL KNOW YOUR SECRET_

Richie looks at the fork again, wondering, not for the first time, how it would feel to plunge that fork through his leg. He wonders how much he would bleed, how badly it would hurt, if Eddie would forgive him if he did it.

_YOUR DIRTY LITTLE SECRET_

Richie hears the phone ring from its place on the wall and he answers the call on the fourth ring, still staring at the fork clutched in his hand.

“Tozier residence.” 

He’s met with a brief silence before Eddie, in a small, quiet voice, says, “Hi.”

“Hi, Eddie Spaghetti.” The issues he was just preoccupied with quiet as he listens to Eddie breathe into the receiver. He puts down the fork he’d just moments ago been wielding like a weapon as Eddie sighs softly. "What's up, Eds. Is something wrong?"

“Yeah. There is, I think.” Richie heart rate ticks up.

“Are you okay?” He hears Eddie let out a small cry, and Richie lets out one of his own at the sound.

“No. Not for a while I haven’t been.” Richie immediately springs into action, stretching from where the phone to attached to the wall to push the kitchen chair in roughly, its legs scuffing against the linoleum, and grab his keys off the table.

“I’m coming to get you. Can I come get you? Are you home?” Richie’s already throwing his dad’s bomber jacket on before Eddie even has a chance to answer.

“Yeah,” he says, voice breaking.

“I’m coming.” Eddie laughs quietly for a moment, but the lovely sound is gone as quickly as it came.

“Be careful. I know how you are behind the wheel.” A fond smile slips onto Richie’s face without him asking it to as he rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, yeah, I know, _ mom_. I’m a regular Evel Knievel. I’ll be there in a second, okay, Eds?” Eddie makes a soft sound of assent.

“See you soon. And, Richie?” Richie hums, more worried than before that Eddie didn’t take the nickname bait. Why didn’t he scold him for it? Something must really be wrong. “Thank you,” he whispers brokenly.

“Anytime,” he murmurs as the line goes dead, cheeks burning from his own tenderness. Richie hangs the phone up and slams his front door shut, locking it with his meal forgotten on the table.

Richie’s mind races with possibility as he drives the path worn with both their bikes’ use to Eddie’s house hastily. When he gets there, he parks his car across from Eddie’s house without shutting it off. He looks at the front garden that Eddie takes more care of than his mother does, despite her insistence that he doesn’t, hailing that he’ll hurt himself or aggravate his allergies. He sees Eddie through the window, makes eye contact with him and watches as he quickly gets his things together. He blows out a candle that was lit on his desk. He puts a few pillows under his blanket to make it look like he’s in his bed if his mother comes in and then the lights shut off, plunging the familiar scene of Eddie’s world into darkness as he travels towards the window. Richie watches him open it, climb down the lattice carefully, and walk across the street, slipping into Richie’s car. He quietly shuts the door and sighs softly, putting his head in his hands to avoid eye contact. 

Eddie doesn’t say a word and neither does Richie, doesn’t even nod at him as he looks over at him with red-rimmed eyes. Richie peels off the street and into the night. They didn’t decide where they were going in their brief conversation, so Richie starts towards town, figuring maybe they can get something to eat. He hopes that would calm Eddie down. He’s a big fan of the diner; hopefully it isn’t closed yet. Maybe a cheeseburger is all he needs right now, to dance to some tunes on the jukebox and kick back. Richie can tell whatever is bothering him is more than something that can be easily fixed with music and a cheeseburger, but he still hopes, for Eddie’s sake as well as his own, that it can. 

After a few minutes of the only sound being the road beneath them, Richie begins to worry. Silence isn’t like either of them, and Richie can’t stand the quiet. He never could.

“Did something happen?” Richie asks him softly, not wanting to spook his best friend in his passenger’s seat curled in on himself, gazing out the window with his temple against the glass. Richie looks over at him briefly as Eddie closes his eyes and nods jerkily.

“Something’s been happening,” Eddie whispers. _ What a cryptic shit, _ Richie thinks to himself fondly before speaking up again.

“You can talk to me about anything, you know. I’m here. I hope you know that by now, little Spaghetti.” Eddie sniffs loudly and nods again quickly.

“I know you are, Rich. I do.” Still not taking the bait with Richie’s nicknames. Eddie doesn’t offer up anymore information for a few minutes and Richie lets him have his peace, knowing the truth will come out of him eventually. Eddie’s like a geyser; he can’t keep himself contained. They both spill over into the world, overflowing with everything they feel, everything they are. Richie likes to think that’s one of the reasons they’re drawn to each other like magnets always turned the right way. Eddie sighs.

“Have you ever loved someone you know you shouldn’t? Ever just _ know _ someone doesn’t love you back?” Richie wants to laugh. _ Of course. _ He loves with a white-hot intensity, another reason they fit together seamlessly. Eddie loves with his entire self, always has, flinging himself off of high dives every time he so much as stumbles into something lovely, despite his fears and anxieties. He wants desperately for Eddie to trip over him. He knows he won’t; Eddie and Richie used to refer to each other as brothers when they met. They have known each other for too long now and Richie has been staying quiet about who he knows he is for far longer than he should’ve. 

He sometimes wishes he hadn’t, wishes he had been able to rush headfirst into Eddie without thinking like he does with all things, all relationships. Richie chose to be careful with Eddie, because he knew he had to, and he doesn’t regret it, but sometimes, like this moment, sitting in his car as Eddie falls for someone else, he wonders. He wonders often. Richie pauses, trying to figure out the best way to answer this question without tipping Eddie off. He minutely shrugs. He realizes all at once that Eddie would never think to see him or his words like that. He trusts Richie not to love him, not like that. Richie feels sick for breaking that unspoken promise he and Eddie have. He feels sick for feeling this way at all. 

“Yeah, Eddie, I know that feeling.” He looks over at Richie sharply, and Richie catches his gaze, Eddie’s eyes liquid and electric in the dark. Richie envies the girl who turned Eddie’s eyes to gold; he hopes it was Beverly. It would make things easier on him if he knew the girl he went on his first date with, one of his very best friends, is who’s caught Eddie’s eye. Beverly catches everyone’s eye; she’s a real peach that way.

“I know the feeling,” he repeats. Richie’s foot taps the gas harder than he should, needing to match the rush he feels in his blood on his skin. He doesn’t let it up. The speedometer inches higher and higher as Eddie looks at him, gaze steady and emotions split wide open all over his face. Suddenly, Richie can’t handle it, can’t keep looking at him without saying something he knows he shouldn’t, so he tears his eyes away, looking back to the dark road, wishing he could drown in the emotion Eddie has pouring out of him, feeding the air with a charge that Richie doesn't recognize. _ What a lovely way to die, _ he thinks.

Eddie continues to stare at the side of his face and Richie wants to say so much, has to bite his lip so he doesn’t scream all the things he feels for Eddie. He wants to throttle him, wants to choke his pretty neck and yell in his face that he’s loved him for so long, he doesn’t know who he’d be without the feeling. Wants to tell him that he'd die for him, that he wishes he already had. 

Richie feels like a wild animal—caged, captive, too dangerous to be free. He suddenly feels all the things wrong with him bubbling to the surface, all the red-hot, ugly things that make him human: lust, desire, anger, obsession. Heart racing and hands clammy, he presses down harder on the gas and veers down the road that will take them away further into the woods. 

_ Eddie would never love someone this damaged, this broken, dying this obviously, this plainly, _ he thinks. He chuckles darkly to himself, pushing the speedometer to 50 miles per hour. Eddie touches his thigh softly, eyes still boring into him. Richie worries Eddie knows what he’s thinking, is broadcasting it all too loudly, even as he bites hard into his lip to keep from speaking, tasting metal.

“Richie,” Eddie breathes, just as softly as the hot touch Richie feels through his jeans. 60 miles per hour. Eddie’s palm presses harder into his flesh, and Richie wills himself not to get hard as Eddie’s hand slips an inch higher. He focuses on the road, the speed, the gravel beneath them. He breathes steadily. 

This is dangerous, this is upping the ante, this is not something he understands, and Richie feels more out of control than ever before. Is Eddie trying to comfort him? Trying to will him to drive slower? Eddie doesn’t like when he does dangerous things. Not usually. Or is the loaded way Eddie said his name, his hand burning a hole through him, the charge in the air between them as Eddie’s eyes bore into his skull, something he recognizes? Something he mirrors?

“Eddie, what are you doing?” His voice has a warning rumble, the rasp of it echoing in the car. Eddie slides his hand a bit higher. Richie bites the inside of his cheek to trap whatever noise almost escaped him. Eddie’s hand is so dangerously close to where Richie has wanted it for so long, where he has imagined it filled with shame in the dark.

“What I want. I never do what I want, Richie. You’re always living your life the way you want to, so fucking unabashed, never holding back. I hide so much...” Richie does laugh this time, dark and humiliated, letting it out of his throat like a secret harbored for years and now finally set out to sea.

“If you think I’m not hiding, you know me far less than I thought you did.” He can feel Eddie’s gaze intensify and because he’s so in-tune with everything Eddie is, he looks at him.

“Who do you love, Richie? What are you hiding? What do you want?” Richie tears his eyes away from Eddie’s like he’s been seared. 80 miles per hour. They’re speeding down the back roads of Derry in the dead of night and Richie has never been burned by anything so bright in his life. Eddie is set aflame in the passenger seat of Richie’s car. Richie prays to a God he knows is always listening to Eddie, more holy than Richie will ever be, that he’s right about what Eddie’s intentions are and says what he’d been feeling for years and years.

“Someone cute, Eds. Cute, cute, cute.” His voice is quiet and dripping in shame. He's so quiet that he isn’t sure if Eddie even hears him. 

But then Eddie slides his hand up, up, and palms Richie through his jeans. Richie can’t manage to choke down the moan that falls off his lips, an omission of something very real in the darkness. He hadn’t been able to keep himself from getting hard, but he feels himself stiffen further in his constricting jeans at Eddie’s touch. The car jolts with the sudden pressure on the gas pedal, but Eddie doesn’t let up. His hand moves in a torturously slow rhythm and Richie can feel every nerve ending in his body, can feel his pulse beat stronger than he ever remembers feeling it before against the skin of his throat. 

But Richie needs more than this. 

For all his talk of it, Richie doesn’t much care about sex, at least not in the way that he says he does. He’s been perfecting the script of words to say to make people think he’s something he isn’t for longer than he can remember; he’s listened to boys talk about women and parroted them, assuming they knew best. Posters on his wall of pretty magazine girls, words off his tongue about women he doesn't understand. 

But Richie knows who he is, even if he can’t accept it, and he needs to know if Eddie feels the same. Maybe there isn't a _ girl _who turned Eddie to gold. He’s been honest, and now it’s Eddie’s turn. 

“And you?” Richie’s voice is high, breathy and labored. He tries hard not to feel ashamed by it. He doesn’t succeed.

“Someone perfect who doesn’t know they are. A motherfucking idiot.” The heel of Eddie’s hand presses hard up the length of him, squeezes, and Richie lets out a strangled cry as a result. He can hear Eddie’s harsh, quick, rhythmic breathing in the bench seat beside him and Richie wants, wants, _ wants_. “Pull over.” 

Richie has never been able to say no to Eddie, but now he sounds wild, desperate, a bit scared of the emotional intensity of what he’s feeling. Richie finds his eyes and sees Eddie’s pupils blown wide like saucers, and Richie lets himself hope that Eddie wants, wants, _ wants_. 

He looks back at the road and takes his foot off the gas until the car finally slows to a stop in the middle of the lane, only slightly pulled off the road. Richie eventually, slowly, turns his head back to Eddie who has already taken his seatbelt off, body a coiled spring. Richie feels the need to calm him down; he doesn’t know what’s happening, why they’re suddenly at the edge of a long, long drop, but he needs to neutralize it. He can’t handle this. Richie is scared; scared to be who he is and scared to even pretend that Eddie could be the same. He is weak. 

So, with great effort and terror that this will be the end of them, he removes Eddie’s hand from where it’s pressing into him, folds his fingers up, and holds the back of his hand. He tucks a rogue curl behind Eddie’s ear and cups his chin. Eddie ducks his head further into Richie’s touch, his eyes fluttering shut. Richie drinks him in hungrily, thumbing at Eddie’s bottom lip, rabid with the loss of Eddie’s heated gaze on him. 

Richie sees Eddie's hair, long, curling slightly into waves without having a cut in a few months, unruly from running his fingers through it so many times tonight. He sees his chest, rising and falling too fast to be normal. Richie wonders if he’ll need his inhaler—he’d forgotten to grab the spare one he carries around for Eddie before he’d left. He sees Eddie’s cock straining against his jeans. Richie wants, wants, _ wants _ everything he knows he cannot and should not have. He sighs, head tilting, eyes soft and fond, full things he doesn’t know how to say. He tries to say them anyway.

“I don’t know how someone couldn’t love you.” Eddie opens his eyes and looks at him, but doesn’t move his head from its place in Richie’s hand.

“I know the feeling,” Eddie says again. He turns his head and places a soft kiss into Richie’s palm before lacing their fingers together in Richie’s lap. They’re saying more with their actions than their words could ever dare to betray. Not here. Not in Derry. 

Richie’s heartbeat rushes through him, full of fast and steady fear, and he has never wanted to kiss Eddie more than he does in that moment. Not when he saw him in a suit at their graduation; not when they’d go skinny dipping at the quarry with the rest of their friends; not when Eddie inevitably falls asleep on his shoulder after Richie sneaks into his bedroom at night; not when Richie shamefully thinks about him at night with the door locked and the curtains closed, his hand stripping his dick hard and fast and painfully, the way he thinks he deserves. Not even when Eddie was palming his dick through his jeans just moments ago. 

It is now that he really _ needs _ Eddie, more than he has ever needed anyone. He aches to press their bodies together and just hold on. Richie wants everything: to spoon him, to kiss the butterflies in his stomach, to be deep inside him. But he can have none of it. He knows that these feelings, more than anything else, are the worst thing about him. What he fears the most. So he settles for this boy he’s wanted for so long in his hands and nowhere else. It has to be enough. He wills it to be enough.

It does not work.

Suddenly, a car lays on its horn long and hard behind them and they both jump, realizing only now they’re bathed in the shine of its headlights. Eddie’s hand tightens in his sharply but his spine straightens, head shooting out of Richie’s tender hand, and the moment is gone, destroyed. Richie drops his hand quickly, worried that the person behind them could feel the moment just as palpably as Richie could, like a physical, tangible force. 

He’s shaking as puts the car in gear, beginning to drive again, far slower this time. Eddie buckles his harness. After a minute, Richie slips his hand back into Eddie’s, and holds on the entire ride back to town. He wants to have at least something he can keep for himself, even if he can’t have it forever, even if Eddie takes all of this back when the morning comes, even if Richie hates himself for wanting it at all.

It’s silent again, and after ten minutes of driving, only a few miles from home, Richie feels as if he's going to explode. He drops Eddie’s hand quickly and fiddles with the radio, trying to get a station to come in. It's static for a few long, painful moments, and then they finally hit a radio announcer’s voice. 

“ — really gonna love this one. It was our most requested song of the week, so here it is, folks. I give you: The Beach Boys.”

Music floats through the speakers then, sounding a bit tinny and high-pitched, like it's being played through a music box, and then the drums kick in and it's a song Richie recognizes vaguely from being played so often. 

_ Wouldn't it be nice if we were older? Then we wouldn't have to wait so long. Wouldn't it be nice to live together in the kind of world where we belong? _

Richie had never paid close attention to the words of this song before, more into rock ’n’ roll himself, but the silence is causing him to listen more carefully than he would normally, and he feels his fingers begin to shake where they're hovering over the volume dial. He knows distantly that Eddie can see this happening, but he doesn't know how to stop it. He drops his hand to the plush, velvet seat. 

There is a long, excruciating beat where the song plays on as they listen, and then Eddie slowly, carefully, gingerly, lovingly slips his hand back underneath Richie’s. He pauses for a moment, so that their hands are simply resting against one another’s, palm against palm, fingers lined up, and then he laces their clammy fingers together. Richie wonders distantly if something greater than them is at work here. If this song was _ meant _ to play. Kismet. _ Fate_, he thinks, the word settling between the spaces in his bones with a comforting weight.

The song slows dramatically and Richie can feel his heart rate pick up despite the sticky-sweet, molasses-and-honey quality about the change in the beat. He's terrified for a moment that Eddie can feel his pulse rabbiting against his wrist. If he does, he makes no move to show it. Richie can't tell if the frantic pulsing in his fingertips is Eddie’s or his own. He wonders if the blood they shared at age 13, smeared between their unshakably sure hands, bonded not only their blood, but their heartbeats as well.

_ You know, it seems the more we talk about it, it only makes it worse to live without it. But let's talk about it. Oh, wouldn't it be nice? _

He slows the car and pulls over half a block from Eddie’s house and can see Eddie’s old, beat up, well-loved light blue Chevy that Richie had affectionately named The Duchess. (He had insisted that Eddie name Richie’s car when he got it, and he had chosen Betsy. Richie chastised him for being unoriginal, but had still carved _ Betsy _ crudely into the dashboard with Mike’s hunting knife.) Eddie had bought it with his own money last summer saved up from years of babysitting and doing odd jobs around town that his mother would allow. He’s planning on taking with him when he moves to New York at the end of the summer. 

Richie cuts the engine as the radio announcer’s voice comes through the speakers once again, and he looks down to his lap, his hand still clutching Eddie’s. He brings their hands up to his mouth and kisses the back of his hand, the inside of his wrist. Eddie’s pulse is thundering erratically against his lips and Richie smiles softly where his skin touches Eddie’s._ So it wasn't just me _ , Richie thinks. _ I suppose we _ ** _are_ ** _ connected_. Eddie’s breath hitches, before Richie puts Eddie’s hand back in his lap and lets go.

“Are we okay, Richie?” Richie catches his gaze and sees the silent, pleading question in Eddie’s wide eyes: _ did I go too far? _

“Always, Eds. Even when nothing else is.” He says this so easily, a truth cemented in the drywall of the home they’ve been building together for all these years. 

“Don’t call me that, Richie. You know I hate that.” Richie smiles, and breathes. _ Finally. _

Eddie still looks so scared though, and Richie can’t stand it any longer. He grabs Eddie’s arm and tugs him close in the bench seat, winding his arms around his neck and burying his face there, right against his pulse point. It's fluttering wildly against his lips. Eddie naturally, almost as soon as Richie pulled him against him, snakes his arms around Richie’s middle, palms holding onto his ribs. 

They're sitting thigh against thigh, cheek against cheek, heart against frantically beating heart, and Richie never wants to let go as long as he lives. He thinks he can keep them both safe as long as they stay right where they are and never move, never leave. Eddie ducks his head down and kisses his cheek tenderly, a gesture Richie has done so many times before, but always as a joke, comfortable with the knowledge that Eddie would never return it. This doesn’t feel like a joke. Richie’s blood fizzles. The kiss is weighted with something Richie can’t name, and he smiles against Eddie’s skin despite himself.

“Love you, Eds,” he whispers harshly. It’s the first time he’s ever said those words out loud without the cadence of a joke attached.

“I love you, too.” Eddie’s voice floats in the air of the quiet car and settles on Richie’s skin like a safety blanket. He thinks those words could keep him safer than he could ever manage to keep himself. “No matter what. You know that, right?” Richie smiles again against Eddie as he nods.

“I always hoped so,” he says, trying to make it come off as a joke. He doesn’t know how well he succeeds, considering how his tone is edging on desperate. Eddie presses his cheek into Richie’s shoulder and eventually, in the safety of this car, both of their heart rates slow and they become versions of themselves they understand. They can finally recognize each other again.

Eddie is the first to pull away, unhurriedly, and after a bit of internal struggle on Richie’s part, they are touching no longer. The tension has bled out of the car and it’s just two people who have known every version of one another, but who just saw something they never expected in the other. The air is still charged with that knowledge, the gravity of the situation, but there’s nothing to say—neither of them can explain themselves. Not now. Not ever.

“Goodnight, Rich. I’ll see you soon. And thank you,” Eddie says, eyes soft and tender and merciful in the darkness. “For coming to get me. For driving with me. For everything you do. Everything you are.” His words toll in the depths of Richie’s heart, striking every chord inside him. Richie gives him a smile that he hopes says, _ I am so glad I got the honor of knowing you_.

“See you soon, Eddie Spaghetti. Get some sleep, okay?” Eddie nods, mouth quirking disapprovingly at the nickname as he unclips his seatbelt. He climbs out of the car, a bit ungracefully, as he always is, and looks back at Richie.

“I’ll be waiting for your call.” It’s something Eddie has said to him hundreds of times before, but Eddie says it now like a warning. It makes Richie feel warm, safe, cared for, more than it ever had previously. Eddie wants him, even if it’s not in a way that Richie can understand. Richie thinks Eddie may be the only person alive on earth who wants him, and he squanders that honor every chance he gets. _ You’re pitiful, _ Richie thinks to himself, thinking back to the fork on his kitchen table. _ Fucking pitiful. _

“I’ll call, Eds. I promise.” Eddie smiles back, and it’s almost peaceful. Almost. But Richie knows Eddie better than anybody else on earth ever could, and he knows that Eddie is deeply anxious right now in a way that Richie can’t solve with a spare aspirator and a joke. He wishes now more than ever that he could save the world, could erase the clown from their memories and the hate from people’s hearts. Could make loving one another something safe, instead of something dangerous.

“Don’t call me that,” Eddie says, and he shuts the door, walking down the street towards his house. Richie lets out a breath, pure relief, a release of everything he’s been keeping pent up for years, and drives back home.

The last thing Richie gives to Eddie before he leaves their hellish town behind is a broken promise.

He doesn’t call and neither does Eddie, so he leaves at the end of the summer and doesn’t ask Richie to come with him. He doesn’t even say goodbye; Richie doesn’t know what he would’ve said if he had, but he wishes he had gotten the chance to say _ something _. Anything. Even if it was something stupid, something untrue, something too close to the truth that it sounds like a lie. But he was too afraid of all the changes that would come from accepting their night on the back roads of Derry was real, wasn’t just a fever dream.

As Richie is driving away towards the West Coast, everything he owns packed away in the trunk, he wonders if Eddie would’ve asked him to come with him to New York if Richie had called. If he wasn’t so fucking _ scared _ . He passes the sign that he’d always wanted to leave behind: _ You are now leaving Derry. Come back soon! _ He hopes he never will. If Eddie isn’t in Derry, he doesn’t see why he would. 

The longer he drives, the farther away he gets, he thinks about all he left behind. His friends. He _ did _ have friends, didn’t he? He must’ve. He wracks his brain, searches desperately for their names and faces, but comes up empty. His parents must be glad to finally be rid of him. 

He left his soul in Derry, Maine, and Eddie took everything that makes Richie real, his whole heart, and brought it with him to New York. Richie looks over at the dashboard, sees _ Betsy _carved into it, and smiles. It almost hurts, but just barely. He hopes Eddie takes good care of it.

And that’s the last thought Richie Tozier has about Eddie Kaspbrak for 20 years.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading, loves. here's [other places to find me](http://rebecca.carrd.co).


End file.
